Confessions of a Borderline Slob – Day 5

By: Rachel, on May 26, 2017

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I gave you two lists of interesting bathroom cleaning hacks in yesterday’s blog post:
1) Bathroom Cleaning Hacks I’m not even entertaining.
2) Bathroom Cleaning Hacks that are cool and I would try if I had that problem.

Did you check them out? What did you think?

Today I’m giving you the list of what I DID try and will tell you if they worked.

Bathroom Cleaning Hacks that I tried:

Use vinegar to clean your shower head.

So what you do is put some white vinegar in a bag (enough to emerge your shower head in) and then tie the bag around the fixture and let it soak anywhere from 30mins to overnight (if it has really bad calcium or hard water build up on it.

I didn’t have a lot of junk on mine, but as soon as I put the vinegar bag on, I could see junk “falling off” the shower head. Wow! I left it on for somewhere between 30-60 mins and then took it off, ran the shower for a little bit to rinse the vinegar off. I’d say this is a great fix if you’ve noticed that your shower pressure isn’t what it used to be or the water is coming out slowly.

Definitely would do this again if it needs it.

Bleach or vinegar plus water to clean your tile and grout.

I did this one and I have to say, I was skeptical. I had one tile area, where our soap dish is located, that was caked with soap scum. This was the perfect area to do a test. I sprayed one-third of the area with a vinegar-water mix and let it sit until it was dry and then rinsed it.

Visually you could see blue soap residue in the tub. And on the tile, it was noticeably reduced as well. But to the touch, you could still feel soap on the tile. Probably because it was so bad to start with!

Would I try this again? Maybe. But in the end, I just want to know it’s clean. I would probably just do my normal cleaning by spraying on Scrubbing Bubbles and letting them do their magic. Then I follow up by actually scrubbing it down with a brush.

Use a dryer sheet to clean soap scum.

For the tile area, I mentioned in Bathroom Cleaning Hack #2, I tried using a dryer sheet on another third of the area. It took a lot of elbow grease on my part, but it did remove the soap scum. But this one seemed to make more effort that I was already using by scrubbing the area. Plus it didn’t feel clean at the end.

Pretty sure this hack is meant more for glass doors than tile. I did have a glass shower door in the house I rented in college. I wish I had known to try this back then because there was always so much gross buildup on that door.

I won’t be using this one again on the tile, but I’d definitely give this a try on glass.

Make a paste of baking soda and water to clean black spots from grout.

I made the paste, got out my scrubbing brush and got to work on the spot I have in the corner grout. This spot is always a tough one to reach and clean. I feel like no matter what I’ve tried it doesn’t leave a dent.

I scrubbed for a while and didn’t notice any difference. I then decided to leave the paste on while I worked on cleaning the tub. I came back to it, scrubbed a little more and rinsed. I feel like I can see a little bit of a difference. Maybe, sort of? But it didn’t take it out completely, which is what I was hoping for.

I’d try it again, but now I’m not expecting miracles after the first try. Honestly, I think I need to re-grout, so maybe that’s a better solution. But for the short-term, this was just ok.

So my confessions?

I don’t think I really need any Bathroom Cleaning Hacks. I’m kind of old-school when it comes to cleaning. I still scrub everything by hand. I don’t own a dishwasher, I don’t use a mop. Yes, I still will get on my hands and knees to clean the floors. It’s how I was taught.

I don’t think there are many shortcuts or magic wands that save time. But if you do have Cleaning Fairy that you want to send my way to do the cleaning for me, I’ll gladly accept that!

Today’s chore is “catch up day”. I’ve been talking about it all week because I’ve been anticipating having to use it. I’ll head outside and see if there’s anything that needs addressing. We did the majority of the yard work last weekend, and I did go out and pick up some cans that were lovingly left on our lawn, but I’ll do another canvas of the area and see what needs cleaning up.